make little piles of all the things you don't understand
by starinhercorner
Summary: "Her headstone is a monolith, and the shadow it casts is deep enough to swallow the sun. You are nothing celestial here."


**AN: why must i write such sad gay zee i'm sorry queer lady gods**

* * *

It's not overnight, but her laugh gets stronger. Sardonic chuckles under her breath shift to bursts of light and birdsong from her throat, from her gut, even when he's not around. Her smiles ease into her face without strain in her brow. She helps M'gann bake him cookies. She sneaks you into her apartment to hang out on mission-less nights, and you find out she sleeps in his shirts. His is an effect that lasts, that lingers despite the distances he can clear in the blink of an eye. You make jokes about him taming her. She laughs them off with ease.

She tells you her hair has been getting in the way when she's with him. "Oh-ho-ho," you say, but it comes out flat. You picture thick freckled fingers untying her ponytail, too slow and too careful. You picture Wally, all lanky arms and sunburnt skin, sticking in her hair like chewed-up gum. You grit your teeth.

The first Valentine's Day amounts to a cold February night and her bathroom light buzzing like her cell phone on the sink, like flies on the wall. You never quite feel alone with her anymore. (Sometimes you feel alone around her, but tonight, maybe you don't.) She is borrowing your whitest, tightest dress, and you help zip her up. Your knuckle grazes the back of her neck, and _you_ flinch, not her. She doesn't toss her hair back into place. Your perfume is still misting onto her bare shoulders, bathing her hard bones and soft skin in a haze of light that makes your heart grow and your lungs shrink, when she digs the shears out of her purse. "I want it gone," she says, setting them aside while she gathers stray locks into her fist. "Tonight's the _perfect_ night to surprise him."

This time you don't joke about him taming her; the same words leave your mouth, and in the same tones, but you don't joke. She lets a sputtering noise loose from her lips and rolls her eyes, cocks her hip like always and smiles. You think of the first time you had a conjuring spell go up in smoke.

Because you're better at "girl things," she lets you do the honors. Her hair is as silken and delicate as it is wild, and you take it into your hands like a rabbit whose neck you've been given to slit. It goes limp at first cut. Suddenly your own licorice and jasmine musk makes you sick.

You pick strands of gold off your skin and clothes for days.

'''''

Novembers keep coming and you light candles, but you don't try anything with them anymore—you just need something to mark the significance of the day. No grave sits on a hill waiting for you to bring it flowers, and there's never been anything to bury anyway except suits, a wand, and an old, cold hat. You'll be in the ground first before you let any of it go.

Keeping yourself from fidgeting is a struggle. You think back to being a little girl in church with thin patience and hungry eyes, always on the lookout for hymnal pages to make flutter or feathers on ladies' hats to ruffle with a whisper. Your legs have grown too thick for you to knock your knees together the way you used to, but now, as you face the photograph centered atop your dresser like a relic on an altar, your hair still falls over your eyes like you've been reprimanded. No giggles bubble up inside you or puff air into your cheeks.

When you were inside the Helmet, you could hear things. Kent Nelson pleading his case for you to be spared, for one thing. His apology, next, as you watched his spirit get sucked into a single spot of light in a world of inky darkness. Your own voice echoing at you just seconds before you could form the words in your mind, though everything you could have possibly said escapes you. (You know what you never asked for.) Nabu's voice booming against the inside of your skull and shaking you to the core, and when you felt yours and his mix as his decrees poured out of your throat, his is still all you heard. Shouts, identities you couldn't place as Nabu was slowly blocking out your friends—whittling your focus down into thin straight lines aimed at Klarion, his agents, and the means to undo his damage—as Nabu prepared your body to be a vessel against chaos, of order.

(Nabu wanted _you_, Nabu was going to take _you_ away from _your _life and the part of you that was still able to think by itself was only thinking of _you, you, you, you_.)

Your father is gone, and despite what you've always been taught to expect, he is nowhere he can hear you now: not Heaven, not Earth, and not Hell (yours or his). The purgatory he's trapped in has him because of your lack of better judgment, and the only divine judgment that may ever release him will come when Nabu has used his body up, worn it down to the bone. No one speaks of this anymore, and tonight, you don't either.

You tell the photograph about the New York weather, how climate change has brought hurricanes. You tell the photograph about the packed house last night despite the rain and the drying spell you cast on the audience in gratitude. You tell the photograph about the turkey in your freezer, the herbs and cooking oils you've stocked up on ahead of time, lest you forget. You tell the photograph about last Christmas: the rotating fiber optic tree you got for the living room of your apartment, the strands of white lights you strung along one doorframe, the hammer and nails and extension cords and all the magic with which you don't imbue the holidays anymore because it's been five years since you've seen your father's face in person. You mention the League nomination about which you can't be sure whether or not he knows anything, because you can't be sure how much of him is still allowed to exist. And because the photograph is not him and he can't hear you through it, because this is not a prayer (and because you're pretending that it is and that he can, and if you had the chance to believe he's listening you would hold nothing back), you tell it about the hangover you woke up with this morning. You tell it about the hookups in bars from which you're legally still young to purchase drinks, despite how old you tell it that you feel. You let it know that the last time you went to church is a time he would remember, because you haven't gone since you lost him. Because you wish you'd been a better daughter for him while he was still here and you want to pretend you can make up to him now that he's not, you don't lie. You tell it all the things Dick Grayson has been to you these past few years, and how none of those things stopped you from leaving his bed for good two weeks ago. With sweaty palms cupping your bare knees you look into your father's green eyes from the other side of a wall, a barrier, just like you always do, and you admit it.

You tell your daddy you love her.

'''''

When it happens, there_ is_ a grave for Artemis. There's no limbo for you to linger in for this one, just the cold shock of a sudden loss that has you seeking warmth everywhere, projecting it onto everything. The empty chair at Raquel's bridal shower becomes a joke. Your own arms become good enough. Three days late for the funeral you show up in Gotham Cemetery empty-handed, but flowers bundled together and wrapped in plastic are already leaning against the stone, clinging to life. Your voice coaxes them out of their rubber bands. Your hand conducts them into the soil, splits the ends of their stems into roots and sends them winding down, down.

You feel the tips of your stilettos sink with them. Her headstone is a monolith, and the shadow it casts is deep enough to swallow the sun. You are nothing celestial here. There's no word you can say that has the power to change anything about this, despite what the engravings in the stone tease. You stretch your sight across the full length of her name; your eyes linger on _BELOVED_.

The epitaph is for a daughter. It's not your word to say for her. It never has been, and never will be; you bite at your lips to keep yourself from even mouthing it.

The sun dips low in the sky just to bleed harsh, unwelcoming colors into your eyes, and you want to conjure up a storm out of spite. You want to click your heels together and let a tornado send you spiraling back to another place and time, because the real mechanics of magic escape you right now. You don't want them back. You want _her_.

'''''

_When you watch her smirk into her New Year's kiss, your own mouth starts to itch. She's only a year older than you, but she's got a grip on the world that makes you feel like your powers are just parlor tricks; there's an undercurrent of energy in her every move that makes you feel like you're no longer anything special except when her eyes are on you. You're a magic user, but she's magic itself. You're pretty sure you'd follow her through hell if the glint in her eye told you something satisfying was waiting for you on the other side. Kissing Robin isn't hell, or anything close to it; your waist feels good with hands on it, and you don't think to question whether the touch being his has anything to do with it. _

_When the night is up, it practically takes you doing jazz hands to get her eyes off the boy with his fingers intertwined with hers, but the high-five she gives you with her free hand is worth it. You grip it hard and give it a little shake. You're not sure why. You just know it doesn't feel good letting go._


End file.
